Thursday, July 12, 2007

BREAKDOWNS

Here's another peek at some roughs. The image at the very top is of Conan throwing some creatures about. I wanted to show how strong the Cimmerian was and retain some of that brute force that Buscema did so masterfully in SAVAGE SWORD back in the day. I put him in a position where he is also showing off that he can maneuver his sword like a master swordsman but without sacrificing his forward aggression. Power and grace. The image also hint that the flesh rotted creatures may not be made of equal density as a human. Their skulls are lopped off at the top and a metallic lid with a spike on it houses what impulses are left that triggers thought. None of this is explained in the story, it is something Kurt Busiek and I leave up to the readers. What's fun about Robert E. Howard is that he does not have to over explain the makeup of the sorcery in his stories. Kurt understands this very well, and we just pumped as much odd little details in there so that it has that unnatural feel to the stories. What makes things magical is that we can't or don't explain it. Conan is our proxy. He accepts that sorcery exists in his world, he interacts with it, he cares not to study it in-depth nor does he have to like it.

The bottom set of panels are roughs of the coconut breaking throwaway images that are in the early pages of the comic. Here, it is more self indulgent, since I'm just working out the composition. I altered the panels to suit the flow of the page in the final.